Social Security is Nonsensical

You've heard the stories: Social Security is underfunded and doomed to go
bankrupt. The coming demographic shift in the United States will bring the
system to its knees. There won't be enough workers per retiree to maintain
current spending levels. These are all true charges — Social Security
is a slow-motion catastrophe. The nature of our political
system confounds all honest attempts to fix the program. It is an inherent
structural aspect of democracy that the young and the unborn cannot vote to
prevent the burden their parents are laying on them. But all the ink spilled
over the subject has been beside the point.

The real problem with Social Security is that it's utter
nonsense. How can I say that? Because the fundamental assumptions
underlying the system are false.

Dr. Aubrey de Grey,
biogerontologist at the University of Cambridge, believes that the first person to live to the age of 1,000 is already alive
today — and is already 45 years old!
Dr. de Grey argues that aging is a curable affliction and
that extended lifespans would be filled with healthy, productive years — not
centuries of frailty. Please visit his
SENS website for more information.

Social Security's fundamental assumptions are that people will retire, and
that retirement will be short and ended by death. An individual will
contribute into the system for approximately 45 years, and collect benefits
for about 15 years. (background on these figures)

It is obviously ridiculous for a person who lives to be 1,000 to spend less
than 5% of those years contributing to Social Security, then retire and spend
more than 95% of their lives collecting benefits. It could not work. It
would be a society of parasites with too few victims to sustain itself. The
same observation applies to any other system where benefits begin at a certain
age and terminate at death: The time spent collecting benefits will balloon
beyond all prior expectations. No, your 401(k) doesn't make much sense,
either — forcing withdrawals when you're less than 100 is plainly silly when
you'll live ten times that long!

The concept of retirement itself is nothing but a passing
fad. The purpose of saving for retirement is to be able to live comfortably
during the final years of your life when you're unable to work. If you no
longer age and have an indefinite productive lifespan, there is no reason to
retire in the traditional sense. Your life would end due to accident or
disease, neither of which can be predicted. You'll need emergency savings,
yes, but not funds for retirement.

Instead of retirement, it is likely that people would save for extended
(multi-year or multi-decade) vacations that would include leisure and
education. People would work in a field for (say) 50 years, then tire of
it and take time off to relax and learn something new. They would re-enter
the workforce in a different field. This is my own plan, at least — others
may have different ideas, which I'd like to hear.

Families would change significantly, too. This sort of extended vacation
would be the logical time to have children, because you would have time to
spend with them instead of working. Imagine starting a new family every 75
years, but with the prior families still around!

This is a glimpse into the future, a future that will be upon us sooner than
most expect. The political systems created for retirement, such as Social
Security and IRAs, do not make sense
in the new age of the end of aging.

Private retirement arrangements will need to adjust also, but they are
free from the ossifying "third rail" political bickering. I do not worry
about the coming adjustments in private systems. Public systems are in
trouble, because dedicated special interest groups
will cling to their handouts and ferociously denounce those who advocate
change.

What politician understands this and is willing to assume the fight to set
young people free from these ridiculous mandatory retirement programs?

If you're interested in aging research, I recommend FuturePundit as regular reading. That's where I learned of Dr. de Grey's
shocking prediction.